


A Happy Announcement

by skuldchan



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuldchan/pseuds/skuldchan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes spends a weekend in the flat with John Watson solving puzzles for the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Happy Announcement

**Author's Note:**

> In anticipation of this year's MIT Mystery Hunt (I guess a second year running I am totally obsessed with something Sherlock Holmes-related), here is a BBC!Sherlock/MIT Mystery Hunt crossover. This will be my tenth straight hunt. Can you tell I am pumped? I AM SUPER PUMPED.
> 
> There has been some buzz amongst my fellow Codexicals (this year we are team Codex Alimentarius) regarding Sherlock (one of our hunt coordinators is a fan and several of my friends are), so given what I wrote last year, I couldn't really disappoint this year, could I?
> 
> So here's the Sherlock Holmes/MIT Mystery Hunt crossover redux! NOW WITH MORE PUZZLE DETAILS! AND MORE GAY! (I still can't believe that Sherlock managed to be more gay than the Sherlock Holmes 2009 film. I am hella impressed by that.) MORE CUTENESS WITH SHERLOCK AND JOHN! The only thing you'll want for at the end of the fic is the actual Hunt!
> 
> It should be noted that this was written before the actual Hunt, so no 2011 Hunt related puzzles have actually been compromised as a result of this silly little fic.

John comes back from his errands—posting a ‘thank you’ card to his parents in Spain and a short jaunt to the bank—and picks up the mail on the floor of the entryway as he comes in the door. Mrs. Hudson is still out then, as she was gone when he left, and Sherlock obviously couldn’t be bothered to pick up something as pedestrian as their post.

He rifles through the letters, sorting out the ones for Mrs. Hudson and placing them on the hallway table. All that’s left addressed to either him or Sherlock is junk—preapproval for credit cards and advertisements—except for a small, rectangular white envelope that curiously has both their names printed on it:

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson  
The Science of Deduction  
221B Baker Street  
London NW1 6XE  
United Kingdom

That’s odd, John thinks, taking a stab at the envelope’s contents. Could be a card from Sherlock’s mother, but his birthday—and the disaster it ended up becoming—was already a few days ago. And if that were the case, she wouldn’t have added “The Science of Deduction” on it, or tacked “United Kingdom” onto the end. It must be from abroad, a client requesting Sherlock’s services, but then why would they have used the post instead of contacting Sherlock directly by e-mail? And why did they put the name ‘John Watson’ on there too? So far as he knows, the only people who know that he and Sherlock have, well, partnered up, are friends, family, and the hapless sods at the Metropolitan Police that grudgingly need Sherlock’s assistance.

John flips the envelope over. Printed on the back is simply:

1 Glenbrook Lane  
Arlington, MA 02474  
U.S.A.

No sender, a letter from America, good paper stock, and printed labels to boot. That is quite the mystery. Figuring that his name is on it and therefore he has a right to open it too, John tears into the envelope as he jogs up the stairs.

“Sherlock,” he calls, his voice echoing up the stairwell and carrying through the open door of their sitting room, “Sherlock, there’s a—”

John pauses at the threshold, staring with furrowed brows and an open mouth at the little card in his hands. He knows what it is without having to read it—a single white card, text embossed in crisp black font with a fancy, ivy border; it can only be one thing.

  


Sherlock is sitting in the armchair reading a book, one of the collection that Harry got John for Christmas. He looks up as John finishes his sentence.

“—wedding invitation,” John finishes, uncertainly, as he gets a better look at the card and realizes that instead of names, the lucky couple seem to have only written their initials as ‘M’ and ‘P.’ Inwardly, John groans, wondering if only the Holmeses could be daft enough to send out marriage announcements in riddle form. As John keeps reading, Sherlock speaks.

“No, if it were a wedding invitation it would have included a response card.” Sherlock nods to the envelope in John’s hand. “Which there obviously isn’t.”

“No, I’m pretty sure...” John trails off, as he skims further down the strangest wedding invitation that’s ever been addressed to him. ‘Massachusetts Institution of Technology?’ John’s frown deepens, isn’t that—

Sherlock rises and snatches the card out of John’s hand. “Oh,” he says after a moment’s pause. He smiles, and hands it back to John to pore over. Sherlock returns to his chair and picks up his book again, which John realizes is embarrassingly titled, _Anal Pleasure and Health,_ and is adorned with a photograph of a naked bum on the cover. Sherlock’s expression doesn’t change as he continues reading where he left off, leaving John to boggle both at the book and at their mail in silence.

Finally, John manages words. “What’s this?” he asks, waving the little white card, figuring that he’d be able to wrap his brain around the wedding invitation from the mysterious M and P better than the book in Sherlock’s hands.

“Wedding invitation,” Sherlock replies. He turns a page.

“Not a real one,” John says.

Sherlock’s gaze shifts from his book to John, in expectant silence.

John can’t figure out why anyone would have a reason to send out a fake invitation. Sherlock has the answer, clearly, but is waiting instead for John to make some deductions first. He swallows.

“Well, the envelope is addressed also to ‘The Science of Deduction,’ nobody would include that, they’d just put our names. The venue, I think, is M.I.T., which is a university; strange place to have a wedding ceremony, even if you are a student.”

“Good,” Sherlock nods. “Anything else?”

“It starts at ‘seventeen past noon,’ that’s a random number, isn’t it? And the date is Friday, that’s three days from now. Late for a wedding, very late. So, not a real invitation.”

Sherlock shakes his head, the smile returning to his lips. “No.”

“Who are M and P?”

“Absolutely no idea, but I can guess why they picked those letters.”

“Who?”

“Metaphysical Plant.”

John pauses. “What?”

Sherlock puts the book down, bum side up. “Metaphysical Plant,” he explains, a keen gleam in his eyes as he steeples his fingers beneath his chin. “The winners of last year’s MIT Mystery Hunt, and therefore the writers of this year’s Hunt.”

A long silence settles as Sherlock smiles and then he suddenly leaps out of the chair, swiping his laptop off his desk.

“Hang on,” John says, “what’s a mystery hunt?”

“The Mystery Hunt: annual puzzle-solving competition held on the MIT campus the weekend before the third Monday of every January.”

“You do a puzzle-solving competition.”

Sherlock nods. “Yes.”

“Every year.”

“Since I got introduced to it at uni, yes.”

John frowns, trying to work the last bit of logic through. “And they sent you a wedding invitation.”

“Each year’s Hunt is themed, a loose story that explains why the teams are working to solve puzzles. This year, it appears to center around a wedding.”

“I see...wait, no, I don—team? Hang on, did you just say ‘team?’ You’re on a team? You?”

“I have my own team,” Sherlock replies with a bit of indignance.

John folds his arms. “And how many people are on it?”

“One,” Sherlock replies. “But this year, two.” He smiles.

“You signed me up without asking me,” John marvels, finding it difficult not to keep an answering grin from spreading across his face.

“It’s not difficult.”

John sighs, shooting Sherlock a severe look. He has to admit he is a little curious about what a puzzle-solving competition that apparently holds enough puzzles to keep Sherlock Holmes’ interest year after year must be like.

“What kind of puzzles?”

“All kinds,” says Sherlock. “Crosswords, sudoku, cryptography, three-dimensional word searches, logic puzzles, word puzzles, duck konundrums...anything. Anything can be made into a puzzle.”

“Like Moriarty’s?”

“Oh, they make Jim’s puzzles look like child’s play,” says Sherlock, a light in his eyes as he replies to John. He breaks into a smile, and it is one of the few times in John’s almost one-year association with his friend that he has seen Sherlock buzzing with such enthusiasm and excitement.

Pursing his lips, John nods slowly. That’s rather high praise, coming from Sherlock Holmes, he thinks, especially since Sherlock doesn’t usually think very highly of either university students or Americans.

*~*~*~*~*

Early in the Hunt, John’s realized why Sherlock needs him for the puzzles. Quite a number of them require a certain knowledge of the surrounding popular culture, which Sherlock obviously does not possess. There are puzzles referencing films, television shows, comics, even ones only found on the internet. John wonders how Sherlock ever made it through Mystery Hunts of the past without even knowing that the earth went around the sun. He tried to bring this point up early during the first round of puzzles, and was met with stony silence and an irritated “Are you going to help me identify this song or not?”

The smell of Indian take-out permeates the flat. Sherlock doesn’t eat when he’s thinking, but John finds himself ravenous, snacking on whatever he can find about the kitchen, and drinking tea—at least Sherlock drinks sometimes—deep into the night. He even manages to coax a few poppadoms into Sherlock, leveraging his cultural knowledge against Sherlock’s ignorance. “I’ll tell you who those actresses are if you eat one.” Albeit grudgingly, Sherlock does, though he refuses the chutney.

Sherlock tackles all of the word, cryptography, and logic puzzles by himself, leaving John to deal with anything that has pictures or music that Sherlock can’t immediately identify, and even after working into the next sunrise, they’ve barely made a dent into the puzzles that have been released.

“How many are there in this thing?” John asks in despair.

“About a hundred.”

“We’ve done nineteen, Sherlock.”

Sherlock nods. “Good,” he says, “we’re making better time than last year.” He looks up from his laptop, where he is in the process of filling up a hellish 64x64 sudoku puzzle that almost makes John’s eyes cross. Sherlock’s earnest, “Thank you,” before he goes back to his numbers gives John a couple more hours worth of second wind.

At eight o’clock in the morning, after puzzling all night, John finds himself sitting on the couch buried in papers. Some are remnants of puzzles already solved, answers already submitted, others are ones that they are stuck on, and Sherlock has left them lying around in case he gets thwarted by his current one, and wants to go back something old with a fresh brain. As fresh a brain, John supposes, as even Sherlock Holmes can have after almost 14 hours of straight solving. John’s eyelids are heavy, scribbled sheets shifting slightly as he rests his cheek against Sherlock’s shoulder and closes his eyes.

He might have dozed off or even fallen asleep—John isn’t sure—when he feels Sherlock’s weight shift beneath him, hears the telltale taps of the buttons on Sherlock’s mobile.

“Hi, team Science of Deduction, here. I’d like to call in an answer for the round three meta: be noisy. That’s spelled B-E-N-O-I-S-Y.”

A pause.

“Incorrect?” Sherlock sighs. “All right.” He hangs up, and John feels him settle back into the sofa, leaning deep into the cushions. Even Sherlock sounds a more tired and less frustrated as he sighs, “Well, that was worth a try.”

John blinks. “What was that?”

“Not the answer to the round three meta.”

“Oh.” John needs a few seconds to summon up all of his energy. “All right, I’m going to bed,” he declares.

“Mmhmm,” Sherlock grunts. “I’ll wake you in seven hours.”

John considers the option, and then offers an alternative. “Or you could come with me.”

“We’ve only solved twenty-four puzzles,” Sherlock says. “We haven’t even seen half of the Hunt. I don’t have time for sleep.”

John throws Sherlock a look.

“Or sex,” Sherlock adds.

John shakes his head. “You can’t be trying to race against those MIT teams,” he says. “They’re huge, from what you’ve told me. Fifty people, maybe more, on a team. You’re not going to find the coin, you’re not even on campus. And you’ve told me they leave the puzzles up even after someone wins anyway.”

Sherlock appears to be thinking through John’s advice, which seems to John to be a sign that he is very tired indeed. He’s never seen Sherlock work this hard, and it’s not even a case—there’s no corpse, no crime scene, not even the Mystery Hunt’s famed coin is at really stake.

“Come on,” John rises, yawning and stretching his arms. Joints creak as he works his neck from side to side. He rumples Sherlock’s hair fondly. “Four hours of sleep and you’ll be fresh enough to puzzle for the rest of the day.”

Sherlock glances at piece of paper in his hand, the letters B,E,N,O,I,S,Y written clearly down the first column of all of round three’s answers. It’s obviously the answer, except that it isn’t.

John offers Sherlock a hand off the sofa. “Bedroom,” he says. “Soft bed, now.”

Sherlock smiles, and lets himself be coaxed upstairs. He’ll find the hidden Mystery Hunt coin someday, but at the moment, there’s something more pressing on his mind.


End file.
